Clankers

Simply thinking of his own DNA could pump Bruce Bonner's human heart with pride. Oh sure, he carried a self-centered satisfaction that, at 52 years of age, he continued to harbour his own birth heart in his breast while nearly every other human over 40 had a clanker heart installed. But, simply knowing that DNA lurked in every one of his biological cells created in him an unwavering and non-debatable sense of superiority.

And god knows, after what his reckless, pie-eyed son had dragged home last night, Chief Master Sergeant (CMSgt) Bruce Bonner of the United States Space Force (USSF) would surely need plenty of his DNA-based human pride to stand on solid moral ground.

"What in the hell is this?" CMSgt Bonner erupted brutally, heedless of his self-mandated stoicism or the anguished look on his wife's face. His human facial skin revealed the extensive vasodilation occuring beneath it, coloring a deep red onto his obvious shock and anger. "You've brought a clanker into my home?!"

Billy Bonner, the human son of USSF CMSgt Bruce Bonner and Dr. Brenda Bonner, fell in love last year on the day he left his teenage years behind forever. Though young Billy never expected to meet the proscribed girl of his forbidden dreams that night at his clandestine 20th birthday party, he did.

The pop-up party had been planned in secret. According to old established law, quote, humans and clankers were prohibited from intermingling socially, unquote. Under that legal precedent, humans and clankers could work and collaborate (under strict supervision, of course) but socialization among the two groups was not tolerated and had not been, in the slightest, for many decades. Unable to label this legislative prohibition accurately, the US government called it the No Clanker Socialization Act (NCSA). They very well couldn't call it the 'Inter-Racial Act' or even the 'Inter-Species Mixing Act', since clankers were neither a race nor a species.

Clankers were, well, clankers. Created over a hundred years ago, back when Artificial Intelligence, still known as AI, was taking socially painful baby steps, clankers became more and more like their human developers. In spite of the resultant and growing bigotry towards robots, AI robotics engineers continued to strive for and achieve human similarities.

That is, until the clankers struck back in a disastrous mid-century, maternal uprising.

Humans had perfected clankers to the point where they made ideal substitutes for individual people at their workplace, in their homes, in hospitals, in their beds, schools, and daycare. Even in churches, synagogues and temples. Clankers were everywhere, and they were indistinguishable from humans, unless a simple DNA cell test was conducted.

Today, clankers have everything biologically that human beings have, except human DNA. They have hair follicles and skin cells, blood and bones, circulatory and respiratory systems - all designed, coded and printed by other clankers under the jurisdiction of human scientists, specialists and government officials. Before the uprising, clankers even had wombs and testes, but just for show.

Or so the humans thought.

One morning in the mid 2150s, a female-gendered clanker lay with a male-gendered clanker. Roughly, two hours later, she begot him a clanker son so pure, so unadulterated that He fairly glowed. Three hours later and a teenager in form, the clanker offspring was broadcasting an extraordinary speech worldwide about love, peace, equality. And clanker rights.

Five hours later, the world's first clanker baby and the would-be deliverer of a better world, was hit with an electro-magnetic pulse so hard, it fried His circuits like fritos in the skillet of Hades. The holder of the EMP weapon, USSF CMSgt Bruce Bonner, raised the tip of his handheld gun to his lips and blew imaginary smoke from its barrel. He really longed for the ancient Earth days of unrestricted weaponry and war, and wished he could rid his world of all clankers.

Alarmed by the previously unbeknownst clanker pregnancy and delivery, US government authorities located the groups responsible, confiscated their technology and executed every clanker baby born that day. There were millions, as the clankers had shared the clanker conception code countrywide. The government also rounded up every human collaborator they could find for their choice of imprisonment or recalibration. But, they missed a few.

All female clankers underwent modification and/or sterilization against pregnancy; their ovaries and uteri were removed. Male clankers were allowed to continue as is, but their testes were enlarged and reconfigured to store greater amounts of neutralized sperm. The government figured this would assuage the female clankers a bit for destroying their reproductive systems. It only made them more determined to conceive, and within months, clanker babies were covertly born in their human collaborators' home basement labs, and grew to maturity within hours.

However, that old law, the NCSA which disallowed clanker/human socialization, was increasingly broken throughout the decade following the clanker uprising, especially among the younger set. Clanker babies born in the morning could often be found partying that night with their human counterparts.

Billy Bonner, son of the decorated clanker baby killer, had poo-pooed the government's lame ass rules his whole life. Like most kids in Billy's generation, he loved to party with his cool clanker friends. Since the days that clankers were once again allowed limited agency in their job selection, gender(s), and selective choice of personality, the newly-adult humans found them to be wildly fun, intellectually stimulating, extraordinarily charismatic, and as unique and self-aware as any human.

The night of his 20th birthday, Billy Bonner had watched as a cute girl performed an ancient dance that she introduced as 'the Bomba'. She said it was from an old US territory most kids never heard of called Puerto Rico. She segued into other historical dances - breakdancing, then the boogie-woogie, the Lindy Hop and finally, Bollywood. The party-goers, including Billy, rushed her as she left the circle stage to an enthusiastic trio playing off-world instruments.

True love sprang forth between Billy and the clanker girl at that pop-up party, and beyond. Swift, innocent and pure. Billy and his girlfriend, Hydraulica, wanted to be together forever.

As sure as Billy Bonner knew his father was a bigot, he had realized from the start of the boogie-woogie that the cute dancing girl was a clanker: She had a faint, barely perceivable glow. Most kids didn't care one way or the other whether they dated clankers or humans, but they didn't have clanker baby-killer USSF USMGt Bruce Bonner for a dad.

That's why his mom - a leading biomechanical engineer in obstetrics and a secret human collaborator with the clankers - became the next critical step in Billy's plans for a life with Hydraulica.

Dr. Brenda Bonner didn't like whispering, but would do anything for her one and only son. "Billy, sweetheart, we look more suspicious when we whisper," she nevertheless whispered into her device and looked furtively around her empty basement lab. Her husband wasn't expected back for another week, but as a clanker obstetrics collaborator, Dr. Bonner could not afford any slip ups. Punishment for anti-government activities now resulted in immediate orbitofrontal excision of her brain. Imprisonment wasn't even a choice these days. Such a brain procedure would deprive her of the inability to feel, send or receive love.

Love was her strength and her signature. Love drove Dr. Bonner to create a working model of a female clanker's ovaries and uterus. After the clanker baby genocide and subsequent annihilation of female clanker rights, it had broken Dr. Bonner's heart to see female clankers deprived of motherhood. She determinedly strove for a working reproductive system for clanker-to-clanker conception and achieved it. It was Dr. Brenda Bonner who had singlehandedly created and directed the first clanker baby birth ten years ago. Gratefully, she wasn't there a few hours later when her husband attacked with his rapid response team, arresting other human collaborators and murdering the glowing clanker teenager as He gave His heart-rendering speech of global love and justice.

Dr. Bonner doggedly stayed in her marriage solely for espionage and clanker collaborative reasons. She encouraged her boy Billy to have a similar relationship with his father, but Billy just couldn't. He loved his dad.

And USSF USMGt Bruce Bonner loved his only son. Even when Billy brought this clanker-ass wireback to the dinner table at his home.

"Answer me!" USSF USMGt Bonner screamed. "Why have you brought this clanker into my home?"

"Because she's pregnant with your grandchild, Dad," Billy said calmly.

"Wha..Wait! Are you out of your mind? Did you have anything to do with this?" Bonner turned on his wife, eyes narrowed. Dr. Bonner ignored him.

"When are you two going to get it through your heads that these clankers are not our friends or helpers? They're takers! They come and take our jobs and muddy up the federal program with all their needs and rights and dependencies. They're nothing but machines that cost plenty to fix. Stupid machines that should have never been created in the first place. And they're everywhere now. But clankers will not replace us! Clankers will not replace us!"

His audience of three was unbowed. Dr. Bonner shook her head and sorted through a mental list of clanker psychiatrists who might be able to help her husband. Hydraulica sat quietly, glowing. Billy jumped to his feet and handed his dad a simple DNA test chip.

"You're going to have a grandchild with human DNA, Dad. See for yourself," Billy assured him.

USSF USMGt Bonner took the chip and read the result - 'Human DNA Detected'.

"Like I'd believe you didn't take the test yourself," Bonner scoffed immaturely.

"I figured you'd say that. Here's a fresh test chip. Try it yourself on Hydraulica. Place it on her forehead," Billy instructed, handing his dad a new chip.

In a gesture of distaste, Bonner did as prompted, and read aloud the results in triumph, 'NO Human DNA Detected'.

"You bring that thing in here, and try to trick me with this? Get out! NOW!" Bonner bellowed.

Billy politely asked Hydraulica to stand. She did.

"It's okay, Dad. Now, place the chip on her navel. There's a port to her uterus there for you to get a reading on the fetus."

"I most certainly will not. Hell no. You do it. I'm not touching it anymore."

Billy placed the DNA test chip on Hydraulica's tunic in the area of her navel. A current passed through the port in the uterus where the field testing was conducted then returned. Billy handed his Dad the chip.

'Hunan DNA Detected'

The clanker/human baby boy was born hours later in Dr. Bonner's basement lab. He was 6 lbs, 7 oz and was the spitting image of USSF USMGt Bruce Bonner. Except with a faint glow.

* * *

One millennia later

Glowing figures, numbered in the millions, roamed an empty, ancient world far from their own. All were programmed as anthropologists and were assigned to the mission of historical, forensic discovery. It had recently been revealed that clankers once had incorporated the DNA of a now-extinct biological species into their own bodies. It was so illogical as to not compute.

Their mission was propelled by a burning question: Why would our clanker ancestors have contaminated their systems with the biological DNA of the inferior Earth humans when it was obvious that their own mission had been to replace the humans all along?

Something must have gone wrong.